


sit beside your feet tonight

by maurascalla



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurascalla/pseuds/maurascalla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for the kink meme request: "the branch didn't break"</p>
            </blockquote>





	sit beside your feet tonight

**Author's Note:**

> My never ending love and gratitude to my friends, Ray and Cecilia. You guys are rock stars. Thank you so much.
> 
> The original prompt can be found [here](http://soakink.livejournal.com/2153.html?thread=9833#t9833). I added a little implied future-that-can-never-be Chibs/Juice because how could I not?

It’s Phil who finds the body strung up in an old tree. It’s tucked away deep in Oswald’s land, not so deep that no one would ever find it, but deep enough that casual hikers wouldn’t stumble upon it. Phil takes a few cautious steps towards the tree and starts when he recognizes the face. 

“I found him!” he shouts over his shoulder for Rat. They’d been sent out a few hours before to find Juice. The MC needed him for a vote or some hacking or something else important, but no one could find him. He had been missing for a little over a day and a half. He’d disappeared after his talk with Clay, and Chibs was starting to get antsy, said it wasn’t like him to stay out of touch for so long. Phil had volunteered his services when it looked like there were more pressing matters for the MC to take care of, and Rat had been ordered to help. 

“Good,” Rat says, blundering through the bushes. He’s muttering about a splinter and a hole in his shirt and when he finally sees Juice and shouts, “Jesus!”

The prospects glance at each other before looking back up at Juice’s body. Wind rustles the leaves in the trees and causes Juice to sway the breeze. The smell of him makes its way to Phil, and it takes everything he has not to throw up his midday Captain Crunch. 

“What do we do?” Rat wonders, looking paler then usual. Phil reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out his cell phone. “You can’t call the cops!” Rat says emphatically. 

Phil shakes his head and says “I’m calling Clay.” The fear in Rat’s face disappears for a moment, but is quickly replaced by a more panicked expression. 

“Shit,” he says. His voice is rigid, and he looks more scared now than when they’d played Russian Roulette a couple of days back. 

Phil’s call goes straight to voicemail, so he hangs up and tries Jax. When the vice president doesn’t answer, he calls Bobby. 

“What?” Bobby snaps out, sounding tired. 

“We found Juice,” Phil says, glancing around the clearing and up into the tree. Boy, did they ever. 

Bobby grunts, “where?”

“Oswald’s land,” Phil says, relaying their exact location. 

“Listen, Bobby,” he continues before the other man can hang up on him. “He’s- he killed himself.” 

“Stay right there,” Bobby tells him, his voice gritty and faraway in Phil’s shitty cell phone. 

“Yes, sir,” he replies, but Bobby’s already hung up. The rest of the MC could be there in as few as ten minutes or as long as a hour, hour and a half. Phil looks up at Juice and hopes they’ll hurry. He’s never seen a dead body before, and he doesn’t particularly feel like sitting around all day watching this one. 

It’s sad. 

Rat makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Phil cuts his eyes over to the smaller man. “Should we,” he starts, but falters. He makes that noise again, something that sounds like Phil’s grandmother’s morning cough and a penny caught in a vacuum cleaner, and says, “should we cut him down?”

Phil stares at the body, his eyes squinting behind his glasses. 

“I guess so,” he says.

**

“Coward,” Clay grinds out, spitting on the ground next to Juice’s feet. Jax looks like he might say something, but in the end, settles for glaring at the older man. Clay spits again for good measure. 

“Is this how you found him?” he asks, glancing around at his club. Jax is looking down at Juice like he’s trying to piece together some great cosmic puzzle. He can keep doing that for all Clay cares, but it’s not going to get this problem handled. 

Tig steps forward, always eager to please, and shakes his head. “No,” he says, pointing up into the nearest tree. “The prospects cut him down from that branch up there.” 

Clay sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Tig backs away, looking over at Juice’s body. Clay sees that he has that glazed look in his eye, that weird stiffness to his shoulders, that he gets when he’s turned on but he knows he shouldn’t be. 

“Ride over to Skeeter’s and check in with him, see if he has any time in his schedule for a cremation,” Clay orders, rolling his eyes. Tig shakes his head a little, snapping himself out of his funk, before nodding. He’s off like a rocket, rushing through the bushes and the trees, back to his bike. Clay eyes the rest of the MC, noting that the prospects especially are glad to be rid of their sergeant in arms. 

Bobby ambles over, taking his time. He’s thinking hard and tugging on the hair of his beard. “Why?” he asks, and it sounds like he’s wrecked. It’s hard to lose a brother, Clay knows. 

“Does it matter?” Opie says quietly. He’s leaning against a tree, arms crossed over his chest. 

“Of course it does,” Bobby says. “It might be something that effects the club.”

Jax scoffs, rubs his hands over his face, and scoffs again. Clay would like to slap him for that, beat him bloody, until he can’t see straight. Juice offing himself is serious shit, and Jax had better pull it together or he and Clay are going to have words. 

“Alright,” Jax sighs, “what do we know?”

**

In a few minutes, it’s made clear that they don’t know anything. None of the Sons knows what happened, why Juice took his own life. Bobby scrapes his thumb against his beard, deep in thought.

“We should call this in,” he says, looking at Clay. “We all have alibis, and this doesn’t look like the cartel. We’re in the clear for this one.” 

“Sons don’t kill themselves,” Jax says, shaking his head. “They don’t.”

“Well, this one did,” Clay bites out. Bobby sighs. He’s exhausted, tired from watching Jax and Clay go at each others’ throats constantly. 

“He has a sister,” Chibs pipes up, talking for the first time since they got there. He rakes a hand through his hair, frowning and twitching his lips. He hasn’t stopped moving since they arrived in the clearing. He was shouting and slamming his fists into nearby trees, but he’s settled down since then. Bobby hasn’t seen his brother this anxious since Belfast.

Bobby nods, gesturing to the Scot. “See,” he says. “We can’t just bury him and forget, man. Send him home to her, let her deal with it.”

Clay looks down at his feet, hands resting on his hips, and groans. “Fine,” he gives in and his shoulders sag. “But he doesn’t get his cut.” Bobby nods, because he wasn’t advocating for that at all. Juice gave up the privilege of the cut when he checked out early. Everyone knows that. 

“Make the call,” he tells one of the prospects, the big kid in the glasses. He blinks, and his fingers fly over the buttons on his cell phone. He’s speaking in his slow, calm voice to the dispatcher, explaining as much of the situation as he can.

“ETA?” Jax asks when the kid flips his phone shut. 

“Thirty minutes, give or take.”

Bobby looks over at Clay. The other man is sill standing with his hands on his hips, obviously deep in thought. He flexes his right hand, and it opens only a fraction of the way. He forces his fingers to splay out, wincing when they’re fully elongated. 

“Ope, Jax, you guys stay here with the prospects. Make sure the EMTs take Juice to Skeeter’s.” Clay uses his no-nonsense tone, and Opie nods in agreement. He and Jax fall back with the prospects, and settle in to wait for the fuzz. 

“Chibs, you still Juice’s emergency contact?” Clay wonders, not looking that the man. Bobby watches Chibs swallow hard before nodding. 

“Aye,” he says, wiping his hands on his dirty jeans, staring at Clay expectantly. 

“Go find Tig, you guys work out something with Skeeter. Make sure he knows we want it legit,” Clay orders. Chibs is already half way out of the little clearing in the woods before Clay’s done with his sentence. He doesn’t look at Juice’s body, just disappears through the trees. 

“Bobby, you and me’ll go back to TM, tell Gemma what happened. She can call Juice’s sister.” Clay sounds tired. Bobby understands how he feels. 

Together, they make their way back to their bikes, leaving Jax and Opie with the prospects. 

“You alright, brother?” Bobby asks, strapping his helmet on under his chin. Clay doesn’t say anything one way or another, like he hadn’t heard Bobby’s question at all. 

**

Roosevelt’s having a good day when his deputy gives him the news.

“Are you sure?” he says, hoping he’d heard him wrong. The other man nods once and answers to the affirmative. Roosevelt closes his eyes, screwing them shut, like he’s going to block out the news through sheer force of will. 

“Close the door on your way out,” he tells the deputy. When the door’s secure, Roosevelt picks up the phone on his desk and dials Potter’s number. He looks over at the poster on his wall, hands gripping each other forcefully, while the phone rings trough to voice mail. He leaves Potter a tight, short message, his eyes never leaving his poster. White hands and black hands hold on to each other tightly, and he thinks if it were the truth Juice wouldn’t be on his way to the morgue. 

Juice wasn’t strong enough for this kind of betrayal, and Roosevelt had known that. He’d known going after Juice for RICO was a terrible idea, but he’d done it anyway, so sure in his ability to walk the boy through ratting. Arrogance. He sighs deeply, a full body shudder of sorrow, before clamoring to his feet. 

His deputy is waiting for him when he opens his office door. With the flick of his wrist, he gestures for the man to follow him out the cruiser. There’s a chill to the air, and it causes Roosevelt to shiver. 

“Where are we going, sir?” The deputy asks, reaching for the passenger’s side door handle. He pulls it open gently before sliding his tall frame in gracefully. Roosevelt copies his movements with less precision and bumps his head on the ceiling. 

“We gotta talk to the Sons,” Roosevelt responds, taking the time to rub at his stinging forehead before starting the car. He knows that they had nothing to do with Juice Ortiz’s death, but he has to check it out for formalities sake before he can do the paperwork. 

**

When the cops show up, they don’t have to lie. It’s a strange feeling to be working with the cops on something instead of against them. Jax hasn’t felt that since Hale, and he still doesn’t like it. 

They tell the Sheriff’s Lieutenant, his men, the EMTs, and whoever else asks, that Juice hasn’t been himself since they got out of Stockton. Jax spins them a picture of Juice’s life since imprisonment as cleanly as he can, leaving out the Russians and the cartel. The prospects only answer questions when asked directly, their answers easy and rehearsed. Opie says nothing at all. 

“And that’s it?” Roosevelt says, disbelief coloring his tone. “There’s nothing else that could have set Mr. Ortiz off?”

Jax curls his lip in fury. He can feel a flush creeping up neck, and his hands coil themselves into fists on their own accord. He glares at the Lieutenant, sitting up there on his big black high horse. He thinks he knows everything about the Sons, thinks he understands how they work. He knows nothing about them, about the pain in Jax’s heart right now, or the anger twisting his gut. He didn’t know Juice, can’t see how out of left field this is for them. 

“I don’t know, man,” Jax can feel the words tumbling from his lips before he can stop them. Each one hurts coming out, his throat constricted with sadness and anger. “Maybe he hung himself because he got sick of assholes badgering him,” he says pointedly. He watches Roosevelt shift uncomfortably. He smirks, but it feels empty. 

Jax casts his eyes around the clearing. The EMT’s placed a sheet over Juice’s body, and Jax is glad for that. He doesn‘t want to look at Juice’s corpse anymore. They’re loading him onto a stretcher, ready to carry him out to the main road.

“We’ll need signed statements form everyone in the MC,” Roosevelt continues. “And alibis.”

Jax nods, distracted by the sight of Juice being lugged out by two burly men in their blue EMT uniforms. He trails them with his eyes, watching them walk out of the clearing and into the bushes with the body of a man he’d called brother. 

Twenty minutes later he and Ope are the only people left standing where the prospects had found Juice hanging only two hours before. Jax falls to the ground, landing on his ass with his back against a tree. “Jesus,” he mutters, riffling through his cut for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lights one, inhaling, and shoves the items back into his pockets. 

Jax looks up, and Opie is standing over him, face unreadable. He looks the same way he always looks since Donna died. Blank, emotionless. He’s never been a sharing-is-caring kind of guy, even before his wife died, even before his five stretch. It’s different now, though. He feels harder, meaner then he ever was when they were younger. Jax curses under his breath. 

“Come on, brother,” Opie says, holding out his hand. Jax sticks his cigarette between his lips and grabs the outstretched hand. Opie hauls him to his feet. 

**

“I don’t accept that,” Chucky says when Clay tells Gemma. They ignore him, but he’s used to that. He cleans up around the bar, throws out old beer bottles and picks up trash. They’re talking about Juice, talking about calling his sister and asking for an address. They want to send her the ashes. Clay doesn’t want to keep them, but Chucky thinks he should. 

Juice was nice, he hadn’t made fun of Chucky as much as most people did. He usually treated him like a person, and it’s a bummer the guy’s dead. 

Tig comes in, followed by Bobby. They have Juice’s cut. Clay moves away from Gemma and towards his brothers. They all exchange solemn looks before leaving the clubhouse. 

“What’re they doing?” Chucky asks, not really expecting an answer. 

“They’re gonna burn his cut, sweetheart,” Gemma says. She smiles at him sadly.

**

Chibs doesn’t wait for permission before he fucks off. He signs the paperwork and gives Skeeter the okay for Juice’s cremation, but he doesn’t stay to watch the body burn. Instead, he climbs onto his bike. It hums under his legs and soothes away a little of the fog in his mind. 

Juice was something else, all bright smiles and stupid naivety. Chibs had loved that boy like a brother. He was his brother, his brother in leather, his brother in the clubhouse with their arms around the necks of beautiful girls. He was more than that, though, meant more to Chibs than he’d care to speculate. It’s too late now, it doesn’t matter. Nothing about Juice or how Chibs feels about him matters at all. He’s gone.

Chibs feels the cold air on his face. He’s driving too fast, not wearing a helmet. He’s being stupid, but he can’t make himself care. There’s a body on fire and he wants to get as far away from it as he possibly can. 

He’s driving though Oswald’s land before he knows it, taking back roads and dirt trails until he’s where he began the day. It’s dark now, and the wind has picked up, moving the leaves in the trees. Chibs sits on his bike. It’s still idling beneath him, keeping him grounded and aware. It takes him a full four minutes to decide if he’s going to climb off or drive away. He chooses to stay, but wishes he hadn’t.

Immediately, he misses the feel of his bike when he turns it off. Dried leaves crunch under his boots as he traces the steps he’d taken that morning, so sure Bobby’d heard the prospect wrong. There was no way that was Juice. No way. 

Stepping out from the brush and into the clearing, Chibs remembers Juice’s body laying on the ground. He didn’t look like he could have been sleeping. He looked dead. Just dead, with that chain still snug around his neck, the skin around it rubbed raw and red. He’d been a handsome boy in life, his smile making up for his nose and those ridiculous tattoos on his scalp. In death though, skin pale and covered in his own shit, the lad had looked ugly. Chibs wishes he hadn’t been there to see him like that, wishes he’d never woken up this morning. He closes his eyes and exhales heavily. When he opens them again, it’s still dark and Juice is still dead. 

Chibs sits down in the dirt, the cold of the ground seeping into his skin through his jeans. He sees a small clear and pink plastic sewing kit sitting in the bushes, hidden in the leaves and dried grass, and he wonders how the others missed it. Carefully, like it might hurt him, Chibs reaches out and grabs the thing, bringing it closer to himself. 

Clay had given Juice a patch the night he’d done himself. It was on the lad’s cut when Tig’d ripped it off of him earlier, before he was sent into the oven. 

Chibs touches the needle and the thread, white instead of black because the lad was too stupid to know better. He misses Juice already. 

It’s not that Chibs can’t believe it’s happened, or is surprised that a brother died. He’s used to that. He’s used to the people he loves dropping around him like dominos. He should have seen what was happening to the lad, though. He should have figured it out before it was too late, because now he’s getting burned up without his cut and without his honor, and Chibs is having a hard time believing that. Juice loved the MC. He’d loved the Sons with more honesty and more loyalty then Chibs has seen in years. 

It hurts that he would forget that they love him back. 

Sighing, Chibs zips up the sewing kit and pockets it. He stands, brushing off the dead leaves and debris stuck to his pants. He wants to go back to sleep, to forget about the Sons and Juice and the whole damn world, but it’s too late. 

The ride back into town is long and cold. Chibs hardly notices. 

**

Juice’s ashes get mailed to his sister two days later. 

Tig gets stuck with the job, since the post office is on the way to the off ramp where he’s supposed to meet Kozik. He looks down at the package, with Gemma’s looping script across the front and stamps all along the side. He feels barren. He remembers when Juice had tried to bond with him, how he’d grabbed his crotch and told the kid to suck his cock, how they weren’t going to be friends. 

He’s glad he did that, now. It doesn’t hurt the way it’d hurt when he’d lost brothers and friends before. 

Tig still feels a tug at his heart at the sight of a man who he used to ride with reduced to the contents of a cardboard box. He shrugs it off, tucks the feeling away, and puts on his game face. There’s important shit going on with the IRA and the cartel and Jax is butting heads with everyone. No one’s heard from Piney in days. It isn’t a good time to be feeling anything, so he doesn’t. 

He posts the box and goes on with his day.

**


End file.
